Swans and Masens
by Tallaghan
Summary: "I wanted him because his eyes were empty. I wanted...to be forgotten." AU.
1. Forget

I want him because his eyes are empty; at odds with the beauty of his face. He looks around the room with a careless arrogance, before those green eyes dwell on me, feasting on my skin, like a ravenous child about to play with a new toy.

We both know we'll forget each other tomorrow. Maybe that's best.

I'm in the mood to be forgotten.

He buys me a drink at the bar, but drinks it himself when I refuse. Laughing.

He asks which room I'm staying at when we reach the elevator, and smiles at my answer, pressing the button for his floor.

He undresses me softly, admiring my skin, and I watch him, letting the silent dance play itself out. He gets to his knees, presses his face to the slight dip in between my hips. I lean my head back and let a few tears fall, and he says nothing, as if he knows.

And he carries me to the bed, as of he doesn't.


	2. Peace

His mouth tastes like cigarette ash.

We both keep our eyes open as we kiss, the empty hotel room passing a draught over our intwined bodies. Promised pleasure is like a hum in the air.

He pushes a blanket against my skin, something I don't expect, but before I can comment his tongue has moved soundlessly to my mouth, and again we kiss, fully unclothed, with our eyes open and his body crushing mine against the sheets.

I run my fingers through his hair when he freezes, laying his forehead to mine, his breathing raw and hoarse. He doesn't expect that, and removes the boundaries between us, his hands moving to join our hips again and again.

We never look away. Scared to lose.

Scared to lose a staring competition, as if it matters.


	3. Poison

He's smoking as I dress, watching me slowly cover my body, every article of clothing making his face tighter and tighter.

One of us has to unravel first, and for once, it might not be me.

I can feel it in the air, those strings holding us up, and the way we brokenly recognised one another for damaged goods across a crowded bar.

Maybe he regrets this. I pray that he doesn't, all the while emptily knowing that we're both still drunk, we're both still only four hours past the first glance.

In my distraction, he's there.

I kiss him back, enjoying the naked, hard lines of his body against me. He pulls back, takes a drag, blows the smoke in my face. Watching how I react.

I lean in and kiss him again, and we stay like that, alternating between smoke and desire, a silent reverie that fills us both with toxic dreams.


	4. Part

Saying goodbye. I want to keep kissing him, because he's addictive, like alcohol and nicotine. Things we've consumed.

His back turns, the muscles expanse hard. The skin has marks from me;

-and it bothers me, because it's a sign of fucking.

We didn't _fuck_.


	5. High

I'm wasted again, but at least this isn't a foreign city. Arizona, if I'm being honest, is a bad place to lose it. Too hot.

Lying on the roof of the bar, I try to imagine what he'd do if he was here. My fingers itch every morning, like I'm expecting him to be there.

Maybe I should be angry that I've let myself go to someone who I nevr exchanged names with. Or maybe this is better- maybe I should love the people I'll never see. That way, they don't hurt.

I hurt, and it's no much better than the alternative of being numb.

When I shut my eyes, his heat is what presses me down, not the burning sun.


	6. New

I can't believe it's him, and he can't believe it's me.

And suddenly, it's a game. Like we're meeting for the first time, and he reaches for me with the same abandon.

He looks better this time. His mouth tastes like peppermint, sharp, waking me up instead of dragging me in. I can hold onto his shoulders and pretend I could walk away if I wanted to. That we've never met before.

In his room, he's different. Better. There's less of a feeling that we'll end up dead bodies in the bathtub. But he still has a lighter in his jacket -I feel it as it slides off- and when we're exposed and unsteady he takes a shaky breath from my shoulder.

Like I'm something from a dream, but I'll be the one waking up from him.


	7. Play

It takes me an hour to figure out that he's not doing well, but it only comes when I'm screaming at him, yelling in words that don't make sense. I accepted his offer of alcohol this time.

And he doesn't have his smoke to blind me.

The anger is sporadic -it's not his fault, I'm crying out of sheer guilt and shame even as the rage takes me- but his eyes are cool and calm and he takes my wrists, pins me against the wall, and his mouth is there, speaking a physical language that makes my body relax slowly, stop trembling.

He starts to unravel, like I knew he would.


	8. Facing

_If you want me to break down_

And after the emotions have been dealt with and swept under the rug, he lies over me, tracing lines on my chest. It's intimate without being sexual, familiar without being friendly.

I count the marks I've left on him with detached curiousity.

He leans in, but the kisses are different. They're savouring me, and my hands savour him, and we lie in a confused mess of limbs and skin.

_and give you the keys_

He opens his mouth, and I silence him. I don't want his name.

And at the end of the day, when he meets my eyes, he nods. He doesn't want my name, either, because what could they mean? Something to cry out?

_I can do that but I,_

He buries his nose in my throat, the sharp jaw grazing my shoulder, and he laughs in a way that sends bitter vibrations pouring through my body, shaking me against him until I'm scared we'll both become undone, and everything we've tried to build will die in this desperate, selfish moment.

_can't let you_

_leave._


	9. Hole

I don't look at him on the way down, but we don't need words to talk. We've been speaking with our bodies enough that words feel dead, like kites that fall through the air without gusts of passionate wind.

We've fallen apart. We're in an elevator, the floor numbers like a countdown to when we can escape our crime scene.

"Love me," he says suddenly. Quiet and calm and I think I've heard him wrong.

"Why?" I'm a hurricane of broken strings and he's shattered mirror, reflective, beautiful and so easy to bleed with.

Together, what could we make? Scarecrow necklaces?

"Because we'd be a lot happier together than we are now," he says.

"Misery loves company?" I hate the idea of arts of him hanging in an empty field with me, staying on a scarecrow until a Dorothy comes along.

I am jealous of an if, of a maybe.

He pulls my head back by my hair and his mouth brushes mine with every word. "This is a one-time only offer." And if he sounds like an asshole, he doesn't care, because he's giving me a window to crawl inside his heart, and it hurts enough for him to need to press me against the elevator wall in case I run because then his heart will be left with a weak spot and he'll implode and be destroyed for the bitterness of almost and nearly.

For you to give me permission to love you?, I think. I know the answer.

Always, he'll always tell me yes, and I'll never be the woman cruel enough to ask.

We shouldn't be so desperate. Why are we both so desperate for this?

The elevator pings and my heart thuds and when the doors open he's on the other side of the elevator. My mouth feels frozen without his breaths carving themselves down my throat. He looks so guilty in the light of day. He looks framed.

I leave first because it's over and I have no idea when this even began.

And he has no name, nothing at all to cry out when he realises I'm gone.


End file.
